Truths of a Young Girl on the Thirty-Sixth Floor

Some truths are heavier than others
and those I take with my milk,
once at dawn then once at night – for I know I am
fragile and prefer lies. Of course there are lighter truths too, and they are  
plum-purple, beside the jams, sweet and succulent against the August fervor
and those ones I can eat and enjoy,
like the truth that I am happy to be seventeen. I am on the thirty-sixth floor,
and I think I will stay there for some time still, cooking and cleaning
amongst the stars. Another truth is that once the plates are cleared,
the bus will come and push me across smooth waters, stormy streets,
I always sit in the front to watch the buildings
approach and sneak past me. In my knapsack I carry
an armory, no-name broadswords with which
I can tear apart the world, but I choose to
conquer it instead, and that is why
of all the places the bus could take me, it takes me to university.
These are the plum-truths and they are
plentiful, but they are too seasonal and not heavy enough
to be a meal. And so, for breakfast
I must think about the two-hundred miles that separate
me and my lover. He is tall and lean and I think it is strange
that he loves me, but not even all his
strength at seventeen can outrun the distance between us,
and so he becomes a delicacy, a foreign fruit
of summer, and in autumn I will have
nothing but these truths as my staple rice, my steady grain. At nightfall
I unwrap a frozen dinner. The microwave drenches me with aroma,
this truth is a truth of my mother, who will never cook for me again because
I am past the age of unconditional love. She called me
a whore once, that holy woman, back when I was a different
sort of seventeen, and when I left her she did not
call at all. I know she was young once
and must understand, but when she was young
she was also pregnant. She must have
hated her youth, and so perhaps she can never
understand what it feels to be a young girl
on the thirty-sixth floor.
 
But I seldom dwell too much on that,
I simply move my fork up and down and my plate
slowly empties. It is just a meal and I cannot
eat plums forever.